


Nothingness

by Golvio



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Genre: AU, Character Study, Dealing With Villains, Gen, Hypothetical Scenario, What Exactly Was Demise's Deal Anyways?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 21:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5600995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golvio/pseuds/Golvio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A meeting, which never happened, between the Spirit Maiden and a certain Demon Lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothingness

The only source of light in the room was the lava seeping up through the floor. She had no idea how long she had been here, let alone how much longer she had to wait, and for what she had to wait in the first place. If it were morning, she should have been fixing her hair in front of her bedroom mirror, or sitting at her desk taking notes for first period Herbology. If it were the afternoon, she should have been having lunch with her friends. If it were evening, she should have been in the library, studying her texts while the sound of her father reading aloud from Mother’s favorite poetry book droned from somewhere in the next room. Her whole life had been thrown out of balance in a single instant, and she had been wobbling along desperate to right herself ever since. Some kind of schedule, some sense of normalcy would have helped, but so far all that had happened was one disastrous situation after another, punctuated by strange people giving her orders regardless of whether she was sure she could trust them.

She tried to remember other things from happier times. She brought her focus on things besides the chain around her ankle, whose iron somehow still felt biting cold against her skin despite the choking heat radiating from below. The ground, yes, think about that. The light surrounding her came from lava. She knew about lava, didn’t she? From that book in her father’s library, the one that he said was older than Skyloft itself, the one about “geology.” When rock was heated up enough it began to glow red and soften, becoming almost a liquid. Her aching back remembered the sensation of the armchair she was resting in when she read it. She could almost smell the gentle, yellowed scent of the library. Come to think of it, the heat required to turn rock into lava far exceeded the temperature that any human was comfortable at. How was she not catching afire just from sitting here, only a few dozen yards up?

But before her mind could complete the illusion and conjure up the sitting room from nothing, she was jolted back into awareness by the sound of footsteps approaching, the clatter of arms and armor, and the distant buzz of a person’s voice. Coming up the path were the beasts who had thrown her into this prison and shackled her, and accompanying them was the strangest looking man she had ever seen. He wore a bright red cloak, and his clothing was cut into sharp and angular geometric patterns quite unlike any weave she’d ever seen on Skyloft. He wore more makeup than even Peatrice did for the last annual ball (although his application was much more successful than poor Peat’s ever was). Beneath the bright colors of his clothing, he was completely white, and yet his clothing and skin were somehow unstained by the flakes of ash that floated through the air, whereas her white robes had already turned a dingy gray during her hours of imprisonment. He would have looked somewhat ridiculous, were it not for the way he moved. Every muscle in his body seemed taut, like a Remlit ready to spring upon some poor mouse.

“So this,” he clapped his hands together, “is our Spirit Maiden!”

He strode up to her and leaned in close. His eyes, at least in this light, looked pitch black. Not even the reflection of the room’s glow twinkled back at her through them, as if all the light that entered them was swallowed up, never to escape.

“Yes, she seems about right. You may leave now,” he said, shooing away the guards with a wave, “Goodbye!”

The red, flat-faced guards stood there for a moment, as though expecting more thanks than a dismissive hand gesture, and then slowly shuffled away. Zelda held herself high. This man seemed, if not friendlier, then at least more talkative than the brutes who had ushered her in here. Perhaps she could get some information out of him?

“Now then, let’s get started! I,” He turned to her and bent in a deep, formal bow, “am Lord Ghirahim. Of course, although I prefer to be addressed by my full title, you may refer to me without it for the sake of time, which you do not seem to have much of at the moment.”

“My name’s Zelda.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said that my name is-”

“Did I ask for your name? I think not! That’s not how it works. Greetings are supposed to go like this: I introduce myself, I bow, and then you say ‘it’s a pleasure to meet you.’ To which I respond, ‘the pleasure is all mine.’ Goodness, in addition to being troublesome to capture, you are _very_ rude. Unfortunately, at this point it’s a bit too late for etiquette lessons.”

“And why is that? What do you intend to do to me?”

“Nothing too drastic. We’re just going to take you to the ruins and perform a simple soul extraction to revive my Master.”

“You’re…going to kill me?”

“Oh no, nothing like that! Your soul will simply be absorbed into Them, providing enough energy for Them to shed their monstrous body and be restored to Their proper form! But the ritual itself won’t kill you. You’ll probably be alive for a little while afterwards, however long it takes for a human heart to stop beating if they decide to lie down and do absolutely nothing forever.”

Without realizing it, she dug her fingers into the ground to find some sort of handhold, some clump of dust to squeeze within her fingers, but there was nothing but unyielding stone beneath her. Hot tears began to brim over, and she held her breath, begging them not to spill, begging them not to give her captor any sort of satisfaction. But images of what she left behind swum to the forefront of her mind; her father, her classmates, and her dearest friend. She would never see any of them again.

“What are you doing?”

“I…I suppose I’m crying,” she said, her voice cracking against her will.

“Yes, I can see that you’re crying. I’m not five centuries old. But why? Honestly, if I was in your position, I would be quite honored.”

“Sir, please. I just want to go home.”

For a moment, he looked down at her, mouth slightly agape.

“Home?”

He rose one of his elegant, gloved hands to his chin to stroke it in thought.

“Oh. Well, I suppose then that my plans shall have to be put aside.”

She looked up.

“Yes, the resurrection will be cancelled. I shall have to stand before my peers and tell them that I could not perform the task which was bequeathed upon me by our Creator,” he outstretched his arms, as if orating before a crowded theater of one, “I shall have to face my Master and inform Them that I cannot bring Them back to life, because Her Holiness is sad and would prefer to go home. That was sarcasm. I was being sarcastic. Don’t give me that look.”

Zelda looked back down, unsure of what she was even expecting. Of course he wouldn’t let her go. And now she was going to have to listen to him fill the air with thousands of meaningless words which were even more suffocating and oppressive than the temperature. The tears subsided, not because she had hope, but because a surge of anger overtook the sadness.

“Do you wish to know what I learned to do in situations like this?”

She shifted uncomfortably, unsure how to respond, or even if he was seeking a response to begin with. He seemed less interested in speaking with her than speaking at her.

“What am I saying? Of course you do! You just push those bad feelings all the way down into your tippy-toes,” he bent over as he said this, touching his toes, and then straightened himself in a single effortless, fluid motion. “And then,” he put his two pointer fingers to the center of his lips, “you _smile._ ” He traced the tips of his fingers to the corners of his mouth, unzipping it into a grin. She would have called it friendly, were it not for the fact that his black eyes sat still in their sockets, fixed upon her, judging her and finding her wanting.

“There! Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

“…Not particularly, no.”

“Well, no one cares.”

Flipping his hands behind his back, he began to pace like Owlan during one of his lectures.

“You see, Your Self-Righteousness, there are times when we must put our feelings aside. You say that you are sad, but really, you should be happy. You are about to become a part of something extraordinary. You have a purpose, one which elevates you to a position of great importance, and that’s more than most people ever get. Would you really prefer to languish at ‘home,’ as a nobody who no one cares about? Wouldn’t you rather be instrumental to the beginning of a world without suffering?”

The more he prattled on, the more courage she gained to speak. He was more interested in talking than actually harming her.

“And I suppose that the return of your master will have something to do with this end of all suffering?”

“Oh, yes!”

“And who, precisely, is this master of yours?”

He let out a few short barks of what sounded like an attempt at jovial laughter. “This is no time for jokes, my dear. You know Them very well.”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t.”

Ghirahim’s smile dropped in bafflement, the first time she had ever seen him vulnerable.

“Surely your people speak of Them in hushed whispers? They were the terror of your kind! The very reason your miserable little island was lifted to the heavens in the first place! Their name alone was enough to strike fear into the heart of even the foolhardiest human!”

Ghirahim looked her dead in the eye and let out a long series of syllables. Judging by the tone it was clearly a name, maybe also a list of titles and epithets. As she could not understand the tongue they were spoken in, every last one of them was meaningless to her. He stood there staring at her in silence, puzzled that his words did not have the desired effect.

“How about ‘Demise,’ then? That was the name your species gave Them. A rather pithy title, but I suppose it’s necessary, given how your feeble minds need to truncate things. Does that ring any bells?”

“Not at all. This is the first time I’ve ever even heard of them.”

That last part, of course, was a lie. The old woman at the temple had told her of this thing called Demise in vague, twisting terms; some evil that she needed to defeat before she could return home. In addition to her frustrating vagueness about how her journey would achieve this purpose, the old woman was also careful not to mention this being’s name. This was a fact which she did not think of at the outset of her quest, but she now realized may have indicated that this old fear yet lingered within those who Skyloft had left behind. However, she was beginning to feel a twinge of vindictiveness. For all of Ghirahim’s gestures of feigned friendliness, he had not given her much of a reason to like him. His smiles felt more like reflexes, his airy tone delivered out of force of habit. It was satisfying to watch her captor share in her feeling of living in a world out of balance, albeit temporarily. Furthermore, none of her teachers had ever admonished her against lying to kidnappers.

“Well,” he said, wiping his cape with his hands, “since you appear to be so uneducated in these matters, I shall enlighten you. They were born from the void before the world. When your Goddesses arrived, they forced that peaceful nothingness into creation. However, there was one thing which happened that they never intended. A being was born from the space between things, where the essence of the Primordial Chaos still lingered. But in this world of matter and names, this creature was forced into boundaries and limits by the things which existed around it. And thus, Demise was. But They did not wish to be. They never asked for it. And with existence came pain, the knowledge of suffering, and the deep, gnawing loneliness that comes from being the only being of one’s kind in a world that never wanted Them in the first place.

In the grips of that loneliness, They fled to a dark, sequestered place at the center of the earth. When that did not spare Them from anguish, They tore at Themselves, ripping great pieces from Their body and hurling them to the ground. As they fell, those pieces became Demons of all sorts. Their strips of flesh became the beasts which crawl upon the land. The splinters of Their bones became the servile races, the Bokoblins among them. Their blood and organs gave rise to the higher orders, Their generals and enforcers, my kin. The hair They tore from their scalp became the heat at the center of the earth which surrounded and nurtured us until we were ready to reemerge to the Surface.

They saw Their children, and They loved each one of them equally. For these beings were created to help Them, to provide Them with companionship, and to aid Them in ushering all things back to the void before time. To that end, They created one final child, formed not from Their flesh, but forged from the heart of a meteorite which had buried itself into the earth eons ago. From that black metal They forged a most impressive blade, and breathed a soul into it so that it could better serve Them. Once that frightful war that nearly destroyed us was over, Their surviving children scattered into the air or returned to their shining city below the earth. Only that sword remained by Their side. And so, with Their dying breath, They breathed form into that sword, giving him a body, instructing him to seek out the one reborn with the soul of the Goddess. The power which her vessel housed would restore Them to life, so that They may call Their children to return, to subjugate this false world and return all to nothingness. And that is why you are here; for that final child, you see, was me.”

For a time, she sat there, turning the information over and over again in her mind. And then she spoke.

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“What?”

“If you succeed in your mission, then the whole world will return to nothing. And you will go with it. All that you are, all that you could be, everything you’ve ever experienced, that might as well have been all for naught. Doesn’t the thought of that upset you?”

“Not at all. I was built for a specific purpose. I was given a title, and with it, expectations and responsibilities. I shall not waver, not for anything.”

“But take away the title. Take away your parentage and the war. How do you really feel about that?”

His face became perfectly neutral. But to her, it did not seem to be a carefully constructed mask of indifference. In fact, it was perhaps the first genuine expression his face had ever made in all the time he had stood before her.

“How I feel doesn’t matter.”

His hands were flat at his sides, all the animation gone from his body and voice. “Even if I were upset, it doesn’t matter. My life, my body, was very easily given to me, and it can just as easily be taken away. Myself, as enjoyable as it is, being ephemeral. Everything I am was made solely to serve Demise. I was born for a purpose, and if I never fulfil it, then what was the point of my existing in the first place? Besides,” a new smile began to creep back onto his face, “once everything has ceased to be, it’s not like I’ll be around to feel particularly upset about anything. Oh, you know what? I just had an idea! Something that might help you become a bit more accepting of your role.”

He strode to the middle of the platform, square in the center of her vision. He put his hands together and his feet apart. That stance reminded her of Eagus squaring off before his class for a fencing demonstration.

“This is something the Master taught me to say to myself whenever I felt upset, or uncertain in my duties.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, stance wide, and held out his arms, stretching out his fingers

“I am nothing.”

After a moment his eyes snapped back open, checking to see if she was watching him.

“You’re not doing it. Come on, stand up and do it with me. The chain’s not _that_ short!” He gestured in looping circles with both hands, urging her upwards, “Just repeat after me. ‘I am nothing.’”

“You are wrong.”

“What?”

She got on her knees, straightening her back, tapping into a reservoir of dignity that prior to this she was not even aware she possessed.

“I said that you’re wrong,” she repeated. “I am not nothing. I never have been, nor do I wish to be. And even if I did not care much for myself, there are people out there to whom I matter very much. They wish for my safe return, and by now are probably worried sick. So please, for their sake if not mine, let me go.”

He darted over and grabbed her by the throat, all friendliness gone, his teeth merely bared in a grimace. His grip was much stronger than she’d expected, and beneath the glove his hand felt harder than iron, and even colder than the chain which shackled her.

“You think you’re so _special_ ,” he spat, “All this attention you’ve been receiving has given you an elevated sense of your own importance. We shall see how much these others care for you when you can do nothing for them. Look at you,” he sneered, “All these fancy titles and you can’t even open a simple lock. You’re useless!”

He pushed her to the ground as he loosened his grip. He motioned the guards to follow him out, clearly convinced that he had achieved some sort of victory. Once again she was alone, but she found that she much preferred solitude to the company of her captors.

Her gaze wandered off into the distance, and suddenly she found herself staring into the eyes of a woman wrapped in black. She couldn’t tell if they were truly red, or if it was another trick of the light from the glowing molten rock below. The woman hung from the grotesque chandelier of bones which stretched across the ceiling. With a rustle of cloth, she dropped from her perch and fell upon the two guards stationed at the room’s only entrance. The blows from the flats of her hands against their necks made them crumple to the floor like rag dolls. A flash of light, a puff of smoke, and the woman was now beside Zelda, tugging at the shackle which bound her. When it would not give by her hands alone, she produced a small golden pin from somewhere in her sash and used it to open the lock. She then gently took Zelda’s hand and kissed it.

“Your Grace,” she said with reverence.

Zelda pulled her hand back. She was merely herself, but everyone who wasn’t trying to capture or kill her seemed to think she was something else entirely.

“The old woman said that there would be another, a servant of the Goddess. Would that, perchance, be you?”

“Yes. No time for that now. We must hurry, before he comes back. Take my hand, and do not say a single word until I speak to you first. Do you understand?”

She nodded and gave the woman her hand. Even if she was not who she said she was, she could at least allow Zelda to leave this awful place behind. A curtain of silence seemed to enfold them, clouding her vision and muffling the sound of her own footfalls. Magic, she presumed, enough at least to get them through the temple without any of the guards so much as turning their heads. Even though she knew the dungeon’s denizens could not see them, she still shied from making eye contact with any of them, clinging to her rescuer’s arm for dear life.

Only after they had left the foot of the mountain long behind them did the woman again turn to her and speak:

“Are you alright? How do you feel?”

She searched herself for an answer. Right now she was relieved, but that feeling was muddled by the lingering traces of fear, but also a strange sadness whose source she could not quite identify.

“I feel well enough,” she replied.

“Then let us keep moving. There is much I must tell you, and little time to do so.”

The land here was flat with only the occasional patches of grass. It was dark, but the canopy of clouds above prevented even the faintest pinprick of starlight from shining through. Above, below, and all around was only darkness. Was this what the world was like before it was made? She shuddered, and not just from the freezing night air.

“We must go to the desert to continue your cleansing,” she continued, “as the temple on the mountain is crawling with monsters. After that, we shall plan our return.”

Instinctively, she reached her hand to her throat, which was still sore from the Demon’s grip. “To be honest, I’d rather not go back. I never want to see that place ever again.”

“I’m afraid you must, Your Grace. If we are to stop the revival of…the ritual of revival from happening, you must return and finish your task.”

Zelda said nothing, but in her heart she agreed. Perhaps she would feel that fear again. Maybe she would even be forced to confront that strange, sad man again. But even terror was better than feeling nothing at all. She would stop Demise from returning. If not for herself, then for the existence of her family, her friends, and the boy who waited for her back home. She steeled herself and plunged with her guide into the cold and endless dark.


End file.
